Friday, June 3, 2016

How To Structure Your Webinar Content The Right Way

How many times have you attended a webinar where you wondered why you bothered in the first place? How many times have you taken the time to show up for a live webinar because good things were promised to you and yet, it was another big disappointment?

The presenter spent 30 minutes talking about their life story, brilliance and all the accomplishments that they have achieved. They showcased the testimonials from their success stories. Then they spent one hour pitching their online program or group coaching program and answering questions so you too can invest without missing any special bonuses.

And all the amazing knock-your-socks-off content that was promised in the emails and the ads was nowhere to be seen. They hardly spent 10 minutes saying the same exact thing they said in the emails. Or, they spent one hour giving you so much intricate detail about an important topic that you didn’t understand and ended up feeling even more confused and overwhelmed.

If you have witnessed a bad webinar, take solace in the fact that you are not the only one. Facebook groups and online forums are rampant with people who are feeling disgruntled with these time-wasting events.

And this is precisely why you need to step up and show people how it’s done.

Planning is key

Before you start promoting your webinar, you have got to figure out exactly what the goal of the webinar is.

Your webinar can be totally free in the sense that you don’t promote anything on the webinar. You can just hold a webinar to build your authority grow your email list or just for practice.

Most likely though, your webinar is going to be a sales tool in your business. You will create one webinar (or more) as part of a bigger strategy to promote and sell something new you are about to launch.

When your goal is to sell, there are two things that you must nail on your webinar for it to do its job:

You must give people REALLY good content so that they stay till the end, and earn the right to promote.

Your free content must naturally LEAD into your PAID OFFERING. For people who have stayed with you, the next logical step should be to invest with you.

When you do these two things right, it’s a win-win situation for both you and your attendees.

Start by choosing the perfect topic for your webinar

Selecting the right topic for your webinar will do wonders for your webinar registrations as well as the show up rate.

Firstly, your webinar should solve a problem for your audience. You should have a really good idea of what your audience struggles with and what are some of their biggest pain points. Brainstorm your webinar topic ideas keeping these in mind.

Also, keep your topic really specific. Refrain from making it an all encompassing webinar that talks about the bigger picture. Tackle one issue and talk about that. By focusing on one element of a broad issue, your topic will turn into a hook that draws people in because they will be enticed by its specificity.

Here are some great webinar titles I found:

How to create webinars that sell – David Siteman Garland

How to create a profitable Facebook ads system that gets leads and sales on autopilot – Rick Mulready

Create an outline for your webinar first

I highly recommend that you create an outline for your webinar before you start promoting it.

When you create an outline, you often end up tweaking or changing the title of your webinar. You actually create better headlines that way.

You write stronger copy for your ads, registration pages and on-boarding emails. If you don’t know how to write on-boarding emails (emails that you send out to get people to show up live, check out this blog post I wrote earlier).

Know that you don’t have to give away a ton of information on the webinar. This will only end up confusing people. Plan your content in such a manner that you take people from point A to point B easily and add value in the process.

Give some of your best stuff for free. Firstly, you will only gain buyers when you do this because people are going to be thinking, if the free stuff is this good, imagine how good their paid stuff is going to be?

Finally, a webinar is successful when people walk away feeling like they got something of value from you. Give them a result. It could be a tangible thing they could put into action right away, it could just be feeling inspired and on top of the world, or gaining new clarity and mindset shift around a topic.

Structuring your actual webinar content

Ultimately, your job is to deliver on what you promised. Here’s how to do that:

Remember the 80-20 rule. Give them solid content 80% of the time and only promote for the remaining 20% and not the other way around like it’s normally seen.

Start by welcoming people who are showing up live and creating engagement and excitement by asking where they are joining from.

Make sure your audience knows they are in the right place. Tell them who the webinar is for and who it is most likely NOT for.

Give them a reason to stay till the end by teasing with a bonus they get only if they stay on the webinar with you.

Set the agenda of the webinar and tell them exactly what they are going to get. I also recommend saying upfront that after the teaching, you’ll give them an opportunity to work with you and accelerate your process so they know what to expect. Also, by doing this, you stay in integrity and teach with confidence.

Introduce yourself and tell your story. Make it brief and relevant. Talk about parts your audience can relate to. Build in some social proof but don’t dwell on it too long.

Give them the content you promised. Don’t feel like you have to give away a kitchen sink. Another helpful thing to keep in mind is to think of your webinar as the what and the why and your paid offerings as the how. Your job on the webinar is to bring clarity around your audience’s struggles and challenges, and give them a few actionable steps to see results. It doesn’t have to be everything you know on the topic because nobody expects that.

Transition smoothly into your pitch. Talk about your paid offering and say exactly what they are going to get. Now, don’t be tempted to rush through this process. People who are really interested in investing with you will want to know all the details and will likely have questions. People who have no interest in buying will drop off or already have at this point. Also remember, the better you do with your educational content, the more confident you’ll feel pitching. Giving away that content for free earns you the right to pitch.

Share case studies that are relevant to your audience and results that they can see themselves achieve.

Stay on to answer questions as long as you want but be respectful to other people’s time and let them know it is completely okay for them to leave early.

Creating a stellar presentation

Make a really good first impression. Show people that you know what you are talking about and you mean business. Here’s an example of an opening slide by Amy Porterfield. Notice how professional and attractive it looks. I simply love it.

You need more slides than you think you need. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make. They create a handful of slides and spend too much time on each slide.

You need to have a ton of slides – seriously. Don’t put too much text on each slide, don’t put in too many bullets and don’t spend more than a minute on each slide and keep moving fast to keep people’s attention.

Use slides with images to break up the flow of the text-only slides and use slides to ask questions and engage with your audience, especially if you tend to get so focused on the teaching that you forget to do this.

Use slides to make transitions to the next point you are about to make or easing into your pitch.

Lastly, don’t read your slides word for word. Use them as a guide and to keep people engaged. And don’t obsess about making your slides looking perfect from the get go. Yes, a professional looking slide deck can make a big difference to your webinar but always remember, content trumps design.

Your slide deck is there to support you and your content, that is all.

So there you have it.

Plan your webinar, choose the right topic and then create a killer structure.

Use a great looking slide deck to support to presentation and you’ll have people eating out the palm of your hand.

Good luck and tell us in the comments below how your webinar marketing is doing!

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I am a web designer from NJ who loves getting involved with new web project. I have also have a burning passion for digital marketing and hope to bring out an info product on web design in the near future :)